Faces of Meda

director: Veronika Janečková

original title: Tváře Medy

country: Czech Republic

year: 2015

running time: 50 min.

synopsis

This film documenting the coexistence of filmmaker Veronika Janečková and arts patron Meda Mládková can be seen as a film about the making of a portrait documentary that was never made. Much of the footage used was taken without Mládková’s knowledge and captures her everyday meetings with the director, who briefly lived in her home in Washington during the course of filming. The film thus shows two different sides of Mládková – the public face, which she shows during “talking head” interviews, and the private face, which reveals minor everyday generational conflicts between an aging powerful woman and the young documentarian.

DETAIL:
“She had all the maladies. She was kind of fat, she wasn’t particularly pretty. I also think she had long hair. I told her, ‘You must lose 20 kilos.’ She managed to obtain her PhD in the States in just a year.”

biography

Veronika Janečková is a fresh graduate of the Department of Documentary Films at FAMU. Her films deal primarily with family and intergenerational relationships. Golden Marriage (2003), her graduation work from the film school in Písek, follows a couple after fifty years together. Her bachelor’s degree work from FAMU, Roots (2008) once again documents the tense relations between the director and her grandmother. The Faces of Meda is her FAMU graduation work.

more about film

director:	Veronika Janečková
producer:	Jakub Wagner, Viktor Vokjan
script:	Veronika Janečková
photography:	Veronika Janečková, Marek Brožek, Petr Záruba
editing:	Viktor Vokjan, Kristýna Toupalová
sound:	Veronika Janečková, Veronika Bartošová, Ludvík Bohadlo

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